Thanks 

In the meantime, it is not against game rules to have two accounts and also to perma-sit two accounts on each of those accounts, resulting in de facto control of six accounts.  Reaction of players to this behavior tends to be negative, however; there are players who were attacked over perceived abuse of account sitting, although the results of that effort are ambiguous at best.

So:  It's not against the rules and the devs won't do anything.  If there are enough players who object and can identify a culprit, they could potentially do something.  Speaking from experience, short of an open admission from someone who is also violating other community norms, probably people won't do anything unless or until they are directly affected, and possibly not even then.

If the tone of this post seems a little cynical, please forgive me.  I find the issue to be frustrating.

Given how many folks I see chatting on GC at any and all hours of the day and night, apparently there are a lot of people out there with nothing to do but play Illy.  I imagine some of them need six accounts just to keep busy.

 

LOL...get a job springs to mind.

I can be seen at all hours of the day and night chatting on gc, and yet I honestly don't have time to sit other people's accounts (as those who have been unfortunate enough to request vacation coverage from me can attest).

Here's what I do in Illy that keeps me so busy:

1)  Administration for two alliances, including recruitment, new member orientation, helping players find city locations, resolving disputes with other alliances.

2)  Training and advice for new members

3)  Assisting new players in chat and by mail.  "How do I harvest?  How do I siege a city?  How do I create a commander?  How do I settle a city? How do I siege and capture a city? What are the differences between the races?  Does anyone have a link for ____________."  I have sent 43 mails or replies to players from one of my two accounts in the past 24 hours.

4)  Actively posting responses on the forum.  (5.06 posts per day on average does tend to take up one's time.)

5)  Planning and development for the Crow Federation, including writing briefs on current developments and planning and testing communication tools.

6) Development of forum guides.

7) Tracking and monitoring NPC behavior.

8)  Just trying to be a friend to people who are going through difficult times.

I frequently have two game windows and 2-3 private chat windows, plus the forum, open at any given time.

I assure you, these activities more than keep me busy.  I sometimes am online for three or more hours before I even have a chance to check the builds on my cities (never mind my alt's cities).

I am delighted to do all of these things.  My only point in making this post is that one should not assume that just because a person is active in global chat with some frequency means that the person either is or has the time for monitoring multiple accounts.

Indeed, in all likelihood such a person has less time than people who are completely silent in gc.  Some HUGcr and nCrow members who spend a lot of time doing public service in gc or helping alliance mates eschew alts for this reason.

Yes, there may be people who have enough time to have de facto control of six accounts.  But singling out people who are active in gc as potential "suspects" is just wrongheaded.

Rorrorgash this is just one of the troubles Dev’s would have administering a policy regarding account sitting.  

1.       Extended sabbatical. I am familiar with an instance where an individual was leaving for an assignment of a year or two. Think about what would happen to this player’s account if they couldn't have a sitter. It would get listed as inactive, probably get kicked out of an alliance if it had one, then the city would be seen as abandoned by the community and looted/pillaged or worse razed to make room for a new player… and no one would be able to tell of the injustice of this action. As I understand it, the aforementioned event had an unfortunate ending. The sitter was subsequently accused (reported to the dev) of using this as a multiple account, this caused the sitter to cancel the arrangement, and then the cities were sieges, and upon returning to their devastated account the player left the game.

2.      2.   Alliance management. Simply having a back door into alliance management is important. I can recall an instance where an officer was on vacation for a week or so. During that time an important event came up and we didn’t have access to any of the officers with the alliance control required.

3.       3. It is an exploit not a Cheat. Keep in mind this is not a violation of the rules. Just remember that if you use it as an exploit you are “less of a player”. That being said Exploits can be ways around Bugs… and then we need to ask ourselves how much of an exploit it really is.

4.       4. Times of Crisis. I recall having read somewhere not having the ability to sit accounts caused several problems for an alliance when it was at war (I think it was the Harmless [H?]/White [W] war) the use of Sitting accounts has allowed alliances to protect alliance members who weren’t able to log on 24/7. 

perhaps a limitation on the extent an account can be sat without the owner logging in needs to be established but in any case this is up to the developers to design and implement. furthermore such a policy would have no impedance on players who use this as an exploit. they probably log in every 24 hrs just to get the prestige bonus. so i guess the question is how can you design a policy which enforces the spirit of the law and not (just) the letter of the law. If Stormcrow could do that, he really would be God... then Rill and i would have a knockdown drag out battle for his heart. 

      Copy Past from word = massive fail :-( (on a side note way too many emoticons, where is the simple frown face)

     Further reference:

Exploit vs. cheat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploit_%28online_gaming%29" rel="nofollow - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploit_(online_gaming)  &  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_online_games" rel="nofollow - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_online_games

War with White ( http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/history-of-harmless-and-war-declaration_topic854.html" rel="nofollow - http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/history-of-harmless-and-war-declaration_topic854.html )

Createure, I did not mean that H was doing something or involved in anything. I said rill gets trolled more than H. There was no motive for any political brownie points. My apologies if it sounded differently. 

Please carry on..

No, No; No, No, No. G No! No, No, No, No. This is a bad idea and we shouldn't do it. The fact that you can't buy a "I win" button is what makes this a great game and in my opinion why it has such a strong community of players. furthermore this comment shows a lack of understanding in the game designers intentions. (this time i won't post the link its worth taking the time to find it yourself). If we the community wanted games were we could pay to win; we would be playing Magic (tm) or some other wizards of the coast (tm) game.

on a more relevant note...

Salararius wrote: Can a sitter exodus a city?  Let me clarify, can a sitter exodus a city from the account he is sitting for?

the answer is yes, or at least most likely yes. i can get access to the exodus page of an account i sit for but i haven't actual tried to relocate their city. the only difference i can tell from sitting and logging in to another account is that sitter's can't claim the free prestige every 24 hrs. sitters even reset the "Status" log in the alliance forum (i know cause i just checked it)

of course that leaves the poor missionary who took a 1 to 2 year sabbatical to rescue orphans in a war torn African nation out to dry. 

Any given person can only have two accounts and any one account can only sit two others.  The maximum number of accounts a person could control is thus six.  It's hard for me to imagine anyone being able to play this number of accounts even moderately successfully.  But then I have trouble with just two.

I think it's probable this policy is being abuses, and I know of a few specific troublesome instances, but I haven't seen any evidence that it is either widespread or significantly affects gameplay for other players.

I do hope the developers fix the sitting problem with some time limit on sitting or another solution, but I don't think it's necessary to overdramatize the issue.

Honestly, that's an instance of someone who should probably leave the game and start over.  Yes, starting over from scratch is painful, but one retains the knowledge and experience gained previously, and quite a number of people have done that successfully.  Who is to say that the person will not decide to re-up for another couple of years?

Account sitting is supposed to be temporary.

At this time there's no game mechanic or rule limiting long term sitting. Whether or not someone is perma-sitting an account that the owner never intends to return to is a he said/she said sort of thing that would be difficult for us to determine. But, sitting is different functionally than actually sharing an account and logging in with the person's password. If people start doing that, it's bad mojo and can end up getting everyone involved suspended. 

This isn't the first time the issue has been discussed by the community as well as the dev team, so we are definitely aware of the concerns involved on both sides. It's a tough issue. 

We are still looking at limits and what we could do to address potential abuse and we'll let everyone know when we've got something more substantial to say about it. But for now, yes, we are very aware.

Luna

"Honestly, that's an instance of someone who should probably leave the game" -that is a matter of opinion, and while my specific example is slightly exaggerated i know of a specific instance where a player permanently left after seeing their account was demolished. 

"Account sitting is supposed to be temporary." - I outright disagree with this statement. you are entitled to your opinion but my original post had 2 additional reasons for long term sitting of active players. 

GM Luna wrote:   But, sitting is different functionally than actually sharing an account and logging in with the person's password. If people start doing that, it's bad mojo

exactly right Luna

GM Luna wrote:   We are still looking at limits and what we could do to address potential abuse and we'll let everyone know when we've got something more substantial to say about it. But for now, yes, we are very aware. Luna